Blogs

Greetings,

We are fortunate to have Pastor Paul Schairer working as a Senior Pastor interim with us. Besides filling a pastoral void and assisting at church as a half-time minister, he will be assisting us in visioning. As an interim pastor his leadership and experience will help us in making our plans for the future. I want you to know that personally I couldn’t be happier with having him join us.

Over the last few years I have written in this space most of what I know about spirituality. Unlike theology which is literally a study about God and can go on and on investigating and developing theories and different ways of understanding the host of things surrounding the nature of God, spirituality is quite simple. That is why its practice crosses all religious, ethnic and social boundaries.

One of our well read council members, Don Imsland, lent me his copy of Harvey Cox’s recent book, THE FUTURE OF FAITH. Cox, a former Harvard theologian, has been an invaluable interpretive voice on the American religious scene for decades.

In this new book he astutely divides the history of Christianity into three periods: The Age of Faith, the Age of Belief and the Age of the Spirit.

There's always somebody needing help. And we do a tremendous job as a congregation of helping out. We raised over $700 for Catholic Charities on the last weekend of April. We had over $6,000 come from our congregation for the earthquakes in Haiti. We regularly step up and give.

 Recently I was asked by the Library Committee of OSLC, currently restructuring our church library, to make suggestions of books on ‘spirituality’ to be acquired. I went to my own library where I have numbers of books on the subject and began deciding what books I could suggest and contribute.

As incredible as it might seem at this time, I was a lifeguard at the Mulberry City pool here in Fort Collins
for 5 years after I retired from Campus Ministry at CSU. I had been swimming there for some years
when the manager asked me if I would be interested in guarding during the day for one day a week. I
became certified and had a wonderful experience.
One technique that is used in life saving is to approach a person in distress from the rear and out of

As we begin the new year, I encourage you to consider reading upon an issue that affects us all.
Six new Books centering on the struggles in Israel and Palestine for peace have been added to our
Library and are available to be checked out. The titles of these books are:

• Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict by Phyllis Bennis
• Witnessing for Peace by Munib Younan
• Occupied with Nonviolence by Jean Zaru
• And Christians and a Land Called Holy by Charles Lutz and Robert Smith

Almost every Sunday we publicly proclaim in our Creed that we believe in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Of these three persons of the Holy Trinity we tend to overlook the work of the Holy Spirit, which is most unfortunate. The function of the Holy Spirit is paramount in our faith experience.

How we long for peace – peace in our lives – peace in our homes – peace in our church – peace in our
country - peace in our world.
The late Dr. Joseph Sittler, one of our Lutheran Church’s renowned theologians, writes of two dimensions
of peace. On the one hand peace is a most desirable personal state of well-being. It is ‘rest’ from the turmoil
of personal living in a turbulent society and conflicted world. In this sense ‘peace’ is a gift from God

It was a difficult weekend. Jim Rasmussen who has been the pastor at Trinity, passed
away. The congregation not to mention his family was caught completely off-guard. Please put
their congregation in your prayers.
I had the privilege of proclaiming the promise of Christ Jesus in the midst of this crisis .
Due to the short-term circumstance of his passing (he died Friday night), and being the only ELCA
congregation with 2 pastors, I was asked to help the congregation through this difficult time.